It's not just automation that made low-skill labor worth shit, it's also the next to zero import tariffs on cheap textile and e-waste from overseas.
We traded the cost of our labor for cheap mass produced junk.
Put tariffs on imports proportional to the lack of environmental and human rights regulations the source country has or doesn't have, and boom, problem solved.
Not even saying that you're wrong. But tariffs/onshoring don't exist in a vacuum. It's much more expensive to make anything in the U.S., and people do still want to buy things.
Optimizing our society for excessive consumerism and the eternal "line must go up" race, just to plow the wealth in the hands of a few billionaires, at the expense of workers and the environment, doesn't seem like the best long term.
When the jobs were shipped overseas, those workers were not able to get higher paying jobs, so they were stuck with less purchasing power, such that even though "stuff" is way cheaper now, all the things that couldn't be built overseas now cost an insanely higher percentage of that worker's take home pay.
Sure, you used to have to save up to buy your one pair of shoes per decade, but they mostly lasted a decade. Now you can buy three pairs for the same price, but all together they only last 5 years. You are poorer even though you can "afford" more.
But it holds even if we calculate as a percentage of expenditures rather than as a percentage of income.
The poor tend to spend more of their money on hard goods and the rich a higher percentage on services. And of course goods are a lot easier to import than services.